Improbable Sounds

December 5, 2005... If you've come for the music, you've come to the right place. If you think you might enjoy reading about what else is on my mind, stuff like public policy, journalism 'n' shit, go here instead.

*****

Improbable sounds sound like nothing else. They may have been forged from the same raw ingredients as more probable sounds—human beings and guitars, for example—but they are bastards without precedent. There are no fathers to their style.

San Diego-based guitarists John Reis and Rick Froberg have ventured into the uncharted territory of improbable sounds frequently over the past fifteen years. First as members of the band Pitchfork, after whom the rock nerd website is named, then as members of press darlings Drive Like Jehu, and most recently as members of Hot Snakes, Reis and Froberg have written song after song where their guitars don’t do what decorum and good taste would suggest they should.

Drive Like Jehu - Golden Brown

That tweeting feedback starting at the 1:35 mark of "Golden Brown," and the outrageous skronking riff that follows it … well, it's just not done. Except by these two fellows.

How about this one, from Hot Snakes' 2002 album, Suicide Invoice?

Hot Snakes - Who Died

Exactly who writes a carefully calibrated math rock riff like that? These two, that's who!

Even separated from evil influence of Froberg, this Reis fellow still colours outside the lines sometimes. Sure Reis' Froberg-free Rocket From the Crypt draws much of its inspiration from the oldest and most-familiar bawls in the rock 'n'roll canon, sure RFTC even does a cover of the Big Bopper's "Chantilly Lace," but then there's this number...

Rocket From The Crypt - Short Lip Fuser

Na-na-na-na NA-NA polkaroo polkaroo. Most guitarists would play a riff like that once or twice and cast it aside as too off-kilter, too unwieldy, too just-not-done. Not Mr. John Reis. Mr. John Reis would play that riff again and again. For four minutes and thirty-eight seconds. And call it a song.

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Polkaroo

Polkaroo

On a related note... After being estranged from it for a few years, I’ve been listening to the first Television album, Marquee Moon, lately. If my opinions counted for anything, I’d say that I like it a lot. Instead, I'll just say that more of it is sticking with me this time around than before. Before, only the dramatic, Italianate "Torn Curtain" and the epic, Free Birdesque title track made an impact. This time around, though, even the comparatively short, four-minute numbers have caught my attention—perhaps none more so than the jangly "Elevation."

Television - Elevation

No, your CD player is not malfunctioning. No, the file has not been defiled. That's "Elevation." How's that for improbable-sounding?

By the way, I made up that shit about Pitchfork, the website, being named after Pitchfork, the band.

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